Parental Anxiety and Depression Moderate Intergenerational Transmission of Parental Psychological Aggression in China

Abstract

The present study examined the intergenerational patterns in the transmission of parental psychological aggression in China and the moderating effects of parental anxiety and depression. Participants were 552 children (M_age = 12.81 years, 250 boys) and their parents who were recruited from two junior high schools in Jinan, the capital city of Shandong Province in China. The results showed that both maternal and paternal psychological aggressions were transmitted in Chinese societies, and maternal but not paternal anxiety and depression moderated the transmission of psychological aggression. The strength of transmission was stronger for mothers with high levels of anxiety and depression than those with low levels of anxiety and depression. The findings highlighted the roles of parental distal (psychological aggression experiences) and proximal (negative emotions) factors in their use of psychological aggression and suggested the need for intervention programs to focus on reduction of parental negative emotions.

Keywords

anxiety depression intergenerational transmission psychological aggression China

Introduction

Parental harsh discipline is a common method of disciplining children worldwide, and it is typically considered to include psychological aggression and physical aggression (Straus & Field, 2003; Tang, 2006; Wang & Liu, 2014). Compared with physical aggression, psychological aggression is often regarded as less aggressive and intrusive but is more commonly used in daily parenting (Straus & Field, 2003). According to Straus, Hamby, Finkelhor, Moore, and Runyan (1998), psychological aggression is defined as the use of psychological force, such as verbal and symbolic acts (i.e., shouting, yelling, or screaming at child), with the intention of causing a child to experience psychological pain (i.e., the feeling of psychological or emotional rejection) or fear when disciplining children or controlling children’s misbehavior. There is growing evidence that children exposed to parental psychological aggression are at risk for a number of negative developmental outcomes, including anxiety, depression (Chen, 2005; Jin, 2013), and bullying (Gómez-Ortiz, Romera, & Ortega-Ruiz, 2016). Moreover, previous studies have demonstrated that compared with the association between physical aggression and psychopathology, the association between psychological aggression and psychopathology was much stronger (Glaser, 2002; Iffland, Sansen, Catani, & Neuner, 2012). Unfortunately, there is currently a major gap in our knowledge about the causes of parental psychological aggression, particularly in the Chinese context. Thus, the current study aimed to examine the exacerbating effects of parental factors on their use of psychological aggression.

It has been suggested that parental psychological aggression is heavily dependent on parental factors, such as harsh discipline experience, marital relationship (Black, Smith Slep, & Heyman, 2001), parenting stress (Liu & Wang, 2015), or parenting styles (Gómez-Ortiz, Romera, & Ortega-Ruiz, 2016). Of these influencing factors, parental harsh discipline experience is an important but relatively neglected parental factor associated with psychological aggression. The intergenerational transmission of violence theory suggests that individuals’ exposure to violence in childhood leads to a greater likelihood of perpetration of violence in adolescence/adulthood (Bandura, 1977). According to this theory, parental harsh discipline experiences in childhood, as a distal level variable, may have a particularly important influence on their parenting behavior when they become parents (e.g., Madden et al., 2015; Natalie, Cort, Toth, Cerulli, & Rogosch, 2011; Wang, Xing, & Zhao, 2014). To date, a significant body of research has demonstrated an intergenerational transmission pattern of harsh discipline. For example, Natalie et al. (2011) showed that maternal childhood maltreatment (including physical neglect, emotional maltreatment, physical abuse, and sexual abuse) significantly predicted mothers’ maltreatment toward their children. In a U.K. longitudinal study, Madden and colleagues (2015) obtained evidence supporting the continuity in parental control between grandmothers and parents. In China, Wang and Xing (2014) also found that parents who had experienced corporal punishment in their original families were more likely to engage in corporal punishment of their children. In addition, in a review on risk factors for child psychological abuse, researchers suggested that parents who were yelled in childhood were more likely to yell at their children compared with those who were yelled at less often as children (Black et al., 2001). Similarly, Bailey, Hill, Oesterle, and Hawkins (2009) also found continuity in harsh parenting, including yelling, between grandparents and parents. Based on the intergenerational transmission of violence theory and previous studies, it is reasonable to infer that parents who had experienced psychological aggression in their families of origin may be more likely to engage in more frequent psychological force toward their own children. However, almost all of the studies on the transmission of parental harsh discipline have mainly focused on parental use of physical aggression alone (Muller, Hunter, & Stollak, 1995; Wang & Xing, 2014; Wang et al., 2014) or physical aggression and psychological aggression combined toward their preschool-aged or elementary school–aged children (Schofield, Conger, & Conger, 2016; Wang et al., 2014) but have relatively neglected to explore the transmission patterns of psychological disciplinary practices, especially in Chinese societies.

Unlike physical aggression, psychological aggression often causes children’s psychological pain but not physical injury. Compared with physical pain, which is often explicit, psychological pain is relatively implicit and thus difficult to be observed (Millerperrin, Perrin, & Kocur, 2009). Therefore, the negative effects of psychological aggression on children may be easily ignored by parents, and thus the use of psychological aggressive discipline may be relatively more acceptable than physical aggression. Social learning theory holds that individuals’ disciplinary attitudes or beliefs are often learned through social interactions in the original families (Bandura, 1973), and social-cognitive perspective suggests that individuals tend to behave in ways that are consistent with their attitudes about what is and is not acceptable and appropriate (Deater-Deckard et al., 2003). Based on these two theoretical perspectives, it is possible that because psychological aggression is more frequently used to obtain compliance than physical aggression (Wang & Liu, 2014), individuals who experienced psychological aggression within their original families would view these tactics more appropriate and would also be more likely to repeat them when disciplining their own children, that is to say, the strength of transmission may be stronger for parental psychological aggression. Unfortunately, studies on the transmission of this discipline are relatively limited to date.

Furthermore, research examining the transmission of psychological aggression in parents of adolescents is scarce. It should be noted that as children age into adolescence, parental corporal punishment tends to drop off steeply (Straus & Stewart, 1999), but the occurrence of parental psychological aggression in Chinese families remains high (Straus & Field, 2003; Wang & Liu, 2014). Although research suggests that the use and normativeness of harsh discipline including yelling is now lower in China than in other European, Asian, and African nations (e.g., India, Italy, Kenya, the Philippines, and Thailand; Gershoff et al., 2010), a recent study reported that there are still more than 70% of Chinese parents using psychological aggression to discipline their children even when the children have entered adolescence (Wang & Liu, 2014). In addition, studies have revealed adolescence as a time of particularly notable developmental changes in the brain that can shape how adolescents behave (Spear, 2010). For example, the prefrontal cortex (PFC), a region monitoring conflict, decreases activity in emotionally arousing circumstances in the period of adolescence (Spear, 2013). This change may increase interpersonal conflict (e.g., conflict with parents) in adolescent’s daily life. Indeed, studies have suggested that adolescence is typically characterized by elevated parent–child conflict and declined adolescents’ endorsement of parental authority (Collins & Laursen, 2004; Darling, Cumsille, & Martínez, 2008), thus, parental harsh discipline may be more likely to have negative effects on children’s adjustment during this period. Therefore, the current study aimed to explore the effect of parental psychological aggression experiences in childhood, as a distal level factor, on their current use of this method in a large sample of Chinese adolescents and their mothers and fathers.

Despite the evidence demonstrating the transmission of harsh parental discipline across generations, it is noteworthy that not all parents who experienced harsh discipline during childhood would implement these patterns toward their own children. Indeed, previous studies have shown that parenting in the family of origin only accounts for a small to moderate proportion of the variance in the parents’ harsh discipline (Conger, Belsky, & Capaldi, 2009; Kerr, Capaldi, Pears, & Owen, 2009). Thus, there is a need for further research to investigate the possible moderating mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of parents’ harsh discipline. According to dynamic developmental systems theory (Capaldi & Kim, 2007), some researchers recognized the necessity to simultaneously consider the effects of both distal and proximal social systems on parental discipline and suggested that some proximal factors may be responsible for breaking or exacerbating the intergenerational transmission of parental discipline (Egeland, Jacobvitz, & Sroufe, 1988; Lunkenheimer, Kittler, Olson, & Kleinberg, 2006; Scaramella & Conger, 2003).

Considering the “affective-reactive” view that holds parental harsh discipline as a negative emotional reaction (Holden, Coleman, & Schmidt, 1995), it might be reasonable to suspect that as a proximal factor, parental negative emotions may play an important role in strengthening or weakening the transmission of parental psychological aggression. However, most studies in this area primarily focused on the relation between parental negative emotions and the use of harsh discipline. For example, it was found that parental anxiety could drive overcontrolling, negative parenting behaviors, such as corporal punishment and psychological aggression (Bögels & Brechman-Toussaint, 2006; Xing, Zhang, Shao, & Wang, 2017), and maternal depression was predictive of their use of harsh discipline, such as hitting and shouting at their child (Conron, Beardslee, Koenen, Buka, & Gortmaker, 2009; Kiernan & Huerta, 2008). To date, whether parental anxiety and depression would moderate the transmission of parental psychological aggression across generations has not been examined.

On a theoretical level, integrating distal (e.g., psychological aggression experiences) and proximal (e.g., negative emotions) parental risk factors into one theoretical model may better explain the occurrence of current parenting behavior, with the effects of distal risk factors depending, to some extent, on proximal risk factors. On a practical level, the results of the present study may provide empirical support for the suggestion that when parents experienced harsh discipline during childhood, interventions that target other proximal factors, such as parental negative emotions, may be effective in breaking the cycle of such negative forms of discipline across generations. Thus, the present study aimed to explore the moderating roles of two types of negative emotions (anxiety and depression) in the intergenerational transmission of parental psychological aggression.

To some degree, attachment theory may also be helpful in interpreting the above speculation. It has been suggested that children who had experienced harsh discipline from their parents may become insecurely attached to their parents (Egeland & Sroufe, 1981), and insecure attachment tends to influence many aspects of psychological functioning in these individuals during adulthood, including parenting (Bowlby, 1982). Although such individuals’ internal working models are assumed to be quite resistant to change, some proximal factors, such as parental emotional states, may restructure their internal representation of past experiences. For example, when parents were in positive emotional states, they would view their harsh discipline experiences in a more sensible way and tend to choose flexible and reasonable strategies in their interactions with children. However, given that high negative emotions would occupy limited cognitive resources and result in fewer cognitive resources being devoted to current tasks (Mackie & Worth, 1989), when parents were in high levels of anxiety or depression, they would be more likely to select the already-existing parenting methods that they learned from their original families to discipline their children. Thus, the transmission of psychological aggression would be more likely to occur in parents who were in high levels of anxiety or depression.

In addition, it is important to note that previous empirical work on the relations between parental experiences of harsh discipline or anxiety and depression and current parenting behaviors has mainly focused on mothers, and fathers have been less examined (Holden et al., 1995; Kiernan & Huerta, 2008). However, studies have demonstrated that more and more fathers are involved in their children’s lives than previous generations (Chuang & Su, 2009; Craig, Powell, & Smyth, 2014), and paternal disciplinary behavior also plays an important role in children’s development (Wang, Wang, & Liu, 2016). It is noteworthy that some studies have found interesting parental gender differences in the transmission of harsh discipline. For example, using data from 888 intact American child-rearing families, Cappell and Heiner (1990) found that the transmission of corporal punishment existed for mothers but not for fathers. Although Muller and colleagues (1995) found that both mothers’ and fathers’ use of physical punishment were predicted by their own disciplinary practices, the predictive power was stronger for mothers than for fathers. The findings of these studies reminded us that the mechanisms in the intergenerational transmission of harsh discipline for mothers and fathers might be different. Thus, it is necessary and interesting to examine the above questions in both fathers and mothers.

In sum, the present research collected data from a large sample of Chinese adolescents and their mothers and fathers and examined the effects of parental psychological aggression experiences and negative emotions (anxiety and depression) on parental current use of psychological aggression. First, we expected that the parents who experienced psychological aggression in childhood would be more likely to use such discipline with their own children in Chinese families. Second, consistent with the notion of the dynamic developmental systems theory and attachment theory, we hypothesized that parental anxiety and depression would moderate the intergenerational transmission of parental psychological aggression. Specifically, the strength of the transmission of psychological aggression would be magnified in the presence of high compared to low levels of parental anxiety and depression.

Method

Participants

This study was part of a large, ongoing longitudinal study that was launched in 2010 to examine the relations between parental harsh discipline and children’s adjustment in Chinese societies. The data collected in 2011 were used for the current analyses. The participants were 552 father–mother dyads with junior high school students (45.2% boys, M_age = 12.81 years, SD = 0.71, age range = 11-16 years) in the current survey. The mean ages of the fathers and mothers were 41.26 years (SD = 3.48; age range = 31-58 years) and 39.42 years (SD = 2.60; age range = 32-56 years), respectively. Because of China’s one-child policy, nearly 75.7% of the children were reported to have no siblings. With respect to education level, most of the mothers and fathers had a junior high school or high school education (69.3% for fathers and 75% for mothers) or a college education (25.4% for fathers and 21.4% for mothers). In terms of employment, 9.8% of the fathers and 29.5% of the mothers were unemployed, 59% of the fathers and 47.2% of the mothers were employed in working-class jobs (e.g., factory workers), whereas 31.2% of the fathers and 23.3% of the mothers held a professional, managerial, or technical positions (e.g., teachers, doctors, civil servants). The sample was mostly a working-class sample.

Procedure

The father–mother dyads with at least one child aged 11-16 years were recruited through convenience sampling techniques from two junior high schools in Jinan, the capital city of Shandong Province in China. Parental informed consent was sent home to parents prior to data collection. After obtaining parental informed consent, two packets (one for the mother and one for the father) containing the parental questionnaires were sent home with the participating children. In the attached instructions, the parents were made aware of the voluntary and confidential nature of this research. They were also directed to complete self-report questionnaires independently of one another, and then the children brought the packets back to school. All the procedures for this study were approved by the Institutional Review Board of Shandong Normal University.

Measures

Parental psychological aggression experiences

The Chinese version of the Parent–Child Conflict Tactics Scales (CTSPC; Leung, Wong, Chen, & Tang, 2008; Straus et al., 1998) was used to assess parental psychological aggression experiences in childhood. The core scales of the 22-item CTSPC included Nonviolent Discipline (four items; e.g., “explaining why something was wrong”), Psychological Aggression (five items; e.g., “shouting, yelling, or screaming at me”), Corporal Punishment (six items; e.g., “spanking me on the bottom with hand”), Severe Physical Assault (three items; e.g., “hitting me with a fist or kicking me hard”), and Very Severe Physical Assault (four items; e.g., “burning or scalding me on purpose”), of which the Psychological Aggression scale was the primary focus in the current study. Parents reported how often their own parents engaged in specific behaviors during their childhood using the following scale: 0 (never), 1 (once), 2 (twice), 4 (3-5 times), 8 (6-10 times), 15 (11-20 times), and 25 (more than 20 times). The total scores for psychological aggression experiences were computed separately by summing the frequency scores of the subscale items for each parent. Previous research with Chinese samples has demonstrated good internal consistency of this scale (Wong, Chen, Goggins, Tang, & Leung, 2009; Xing & Wang, 2013; Xing, Wang, Zhang, He, & Zhang, 2011). In the present study, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the fathers’ and mothers’ reported exposures to parental psychological aggression were .81 and .81, respectively.

Current use of psychological aggression

The Psychological Aggression subscale of CTSPC (Straus et al., 1998) was administered to assess parent-to-child psychological aggression. Separately, the fathers and the mothers rated how often they committed specific behaviors described in the conflict situation with their children in the past year. The current use of psychological aggression was scored separately for mothers and fathers by summing the frequency of each of the indicated behaviors within the Psychological Aggression subscale. In the present study, the alphas for the fathers’ and the mothers’ reports of their current use of psychological aggression were .70 and .65, respectively. These alphas are consistent with those obtained in previous research (Wang et al., 2016).

Anxiety and depression

The Chinese Short Version of the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS–C21) was used to measure parental negative emotional states of depression, anxiety, and stress (Wang, Long, Li, & Armour, 2011). In the present study, the Depression subscale and the Anxiety subscale were the primary focus. Both fathers and mothers rated the extent to which they had experienced depression (e.g., “I felt that I had lost interest in just about everything”) and anxiety (e.g., “I was in a state of nervous tension”) on a 4-point Likert-type scale ranging from 0 (did not apply to me) to 3 (applied to me very much or most of the time). The depression score and the anxiety score were computed by summing the scores of the corresponding subscale items, with higher scores indicating greater levels of depression and anxiety. The DASS has been found to have adequate reliability and validity in nonclinical (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) and clinical samples (Anthony, Bieling, Cox, Enns, & Swinson, 1998). In the present study, the alphas for the fathers’ and mothers’ reported depression were .85 and .80, respectively, and the alphas for the fathers’ and mothers’ reported anxiety were .79 and .79, respectively.

Results

Preliminary Analyses

The data analyses were conducted in SPSS 20.0. Prior to conducting analyses, we examined all data for completeness. Missing data were imputed in SPSS by using mean substitution, given that the percent of respondents with missing items in the present study was only 0.05% (Sawilowsky, 2007). Paired samples t tests were used to estimate differences between fathers and mothers in psychological aggression experiences, anxiety, depression, and current use of psychological aggression. Chi-square analyses were conducted to examine parental gender differences in the prevalence rates of parental current use of psychological aggression.

In the current study, nearly 67.6% of the mothers and 64.9% of the fathers engaged in psychological aggression toward their children in the past year, and the prevalence rates of parental psychological aggression did not differ significantly by the gender of the parent, χ²(1) = 0.91, p = .37. Table 1 shows the means and the standard deviations for mother-reported and father-reported psychological aggression experiences, anxiety, depression, and current use of psychological aggression. As shown, the fathers experienced more psychological aggression in childhood than the mothers, whereas no significant differences were found between fathers and mothers with respect to anxiety, depression, and the current use of psychological aggression.

Table 1.

Mean Differences Between Fathers and Mothers on Primary Study Variables.

Measure	Mothers		Fathers		t
Measure	M	SD	M	SD	t
PA experiences	12.82	22.69	16.14	26.82	−2.75**
Anxiety	1.29	2.15	1.12	2.04	1.89
Depression	0.93	1.93	0.90	2.00	0.43
PA	6.82	11.68	6.41	11.70	0.97

Note. PA = psychological aggression.

p < .01.

In addition, we examined the correlations among main variables. As shown in Table 2, both paternal and maternal psychological aggression experiences, anxiety, and depression were positively correlated with their current use of psychological aggression, that is, the more psychological aggression experiences and the higher the levels of anxiety and depression are, the more the current use of psychological aggression is.

Table 2.

Correlations Among Primary Study Variables for Both Parents.

	1	2	3	4	5	6
1. Child gender	1	.03	−.01	.04	−.01	.07
2. Child age	.03	1	.03	.03	.05	.01
3. PA experiences	−.06	.02	1	.04	.07	.19***
4. Anxiety	−.02	.05	.13**	1	.80***	.32***
5. Depression	−.06	.01	.17***	.72***	1	.27***
6. PA	−.09	.01	.34***	.31***	.29***	1

Note. Correlations above the diagonal are for fathers and those below are for mothers. PA = psychological aggression.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Intergenerational Transmission of Parental Psychological Aggression

Chi-square and hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine the intergenerational transmission of psychological aggression separately for fathers and mothers. First, fathers and mothers were classified based on whether they experienced psychological aggression during childhood and whether they had engaged in psychological aggression toward their children. The results of the chi-square analyses revealed that compared with parents who were not subjected to psychological aggression during childhood, parents who were subjected to psychological aggression during childhood were more likely to use it with their children, father: 68.9% vs. 52.7%, χ²(1) = 11.43, p < .01; mother: 72.18% vs. 55.3%, χ²(1) = 14.36, p < .001. Second, as shown in Table 3, both maternal and paternal psychological aggression experiences positively predicted their current use of psychological aggression, suggesting that the more psychological aggression parents experienced as children, the more likely they were to use this method to discipline their own child.

Table 3.

Regression Analyses Testing Anxiety and Depression as Moderators of the Relation Between Parental Psychological Aggression Experiences and Parental Psychological Aggression.

Variables	Psychology Aggression
	Mother			Father
	β	ΔR²	F	β	ΔR²	F
Step 1		.083***	49.87***		.051***	29.82***
PA experiences	.29***			.23***
Step 2		.073***	50.64***		.090***	45.13***
PA experiences	.24***			.20***
Anxiety	.27***			.30***
Step 3		.009*	35.96***		.000	30.07***
PA experiences × anxiety	.18*			.02
Step 1		.083***	49.87***		.051***	29.82***
PA experiences	.29***			.23***
Step 2		.056***	44.45***		.061***	34.89***
PA experiences	.24***			.20***
Depression	.24***			.25***
Step 3		.030***	37.30***		.006	24.65***
PA experiences × depression	.35***			.13

Note. PA = psychological aggression.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .01.

Moderating Effects of Parental Anxiety and Depression on the Transmission of Psychological Aggression

The results of the linear regression models showed that in addition to the direct effects of paternal and maternal anxiety and depression on their current use of psychological aggression, both paternal and maternal anxiety and depression also had moderating effects on the transmission of psychological aggression. As shown in Table 3, the maternal psychological aggression experiences × anxiety interaction and the maternal psychological aggression experiences × depression interaction were significant in predicting maternal current use of psychological aggression, whereas the paternal psychological aggression experiences × anxiety interaction and the paternal psychological aggression experiences × depression interaction were not significant in predicting paternal current use of psychological aggression.

To understand the nature of the interaction between maternal psychological aggression experiences and maternal anxiety, an online resource provided by Preacher, Curran, and Bauer (2003) was used to estimate the simple slope. In the present study, values at 1 SD above and below the mean of anxiety were used to calculate the simple slopes of the association between maternal psychological aggression experiences and their current use of psychological aggression. The same analyses were performed to further explain the interaction between maternal psychological aggression experiences and maternal depression.

As shown in Figure 1, the results of the simple slopes analyses revealed a pattern consistent with an exacerbating process. Maternal psychological aggression experiences were significantly and positively associated with current maternal use of psychological aggression with their children at higher levels of anxiety, β = .30, p < .001, but they were not significantly associated with current maternal use of psychological aggression at lower levels of anxiety, β = .09, p = .19. Similarly, maternal psychological aggression experiences were significantly and positively associated with current maternal use of psychological aggression with their child at higher levels of depression, β = .30, p < .001, but it was not significantly associated with current maternal use of psychological aggression at lower levels of depression, β = .12, p = .07 (see Figure 2).

Discussion

The present study examined the intergenerational transmission of parental psychological aggression and whether parental anxiety and depression moderated this transmission in Chinese societies. The findings demonstrated that psychological aggression was transmitted across generations for both parents, and this transmission was moderated by maternal but not paternal anxiety and depression. In addition, the direct effects of both parental anxiety and depression on their current use of psychological aggression were also found in this study. These aspects of the results will be discussed below.

Consistent with prior research demonstrating continuity in parenting practices across generations (Madden et al., 2015; Natalie et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2014), the current study also found evidence supporting the continuity of parental psychological aggression in modern Chinese societies. Social learning theories, which assert that “violence breeds violence,” provide explanations for these results (Bandura, 1977). According to social learning theories (Bandura, 1977, 1973; Bandura, Ross, & Ross, 1962; Bell & Naugle, 2008), the intergenerational transmission of violence primarily stems from principles of modeling, which suggest that individuals learn to engage in aggressive behavior through observing aggression social models, particularly that of their parents who are familiar and powerful models. In current study, psychological aggression can be viewed as a learned behavior that is acquired by observation, imitation, and modeling. Hence, if parents experience psychological aggression in childhood, they are more likely to use this discipline method as parenting model and thus engage in psychological aggression toward their children when they display problem behavior. Furthermore, the transmission of psychological aggression may be through belief systems, such as parental approval attitudes (Bower-Russa, 2005; Wang, Wang, & Xing, 2018). Since parents have experienced parent-to-child punishment within their families in their own childhood, they may come to view these disciplinary tactics as appropriate and effective ways to resolve conflicts (Gagné, Tourigny, Joly, & Pouliotlapointe, 2007). As a result, they become more likely to adopt and imitate these parenting behaviors (Vittrup, Holden, & Buck, 2006). Similarly, parents who had experienced psychological aggression in childhood were more likely to form positive attitudes toward psychological aggression and thus use such methods to discipline their children.

It was also noted that after controlling for parental psychological aggression experiences, parental anxiety and depression were also significantly associated with their current use of psychological aggression. More specifically, both fathers and mothers with anxiety and depression were more likely to engage in psychological aggression with their children. These results were consistent with previous findings (Bögels & Brechman-Toussaint, 2006; Conron et al., 2009). It is possible that negative emotions within parents, if not well-regulated, can further influence parental cognitions, motivations, and parenting behavior (Dix, 1991) and may become a major feature of chronically harsh parenting (Chen, Bell, & Deater-Deckard, 2015; Scaramella & Leve, 2004). Indeed, Ginsburg and Schlossberg (2002) demonstrated that high levels of anxiety in parents could interfere with the development of parental adaptive coping skills and thus lead to specific “anxiety-enhancing” parenting behaviors (including rejection and control). In addition, studies also found that depressed mothers had cognitive deficits (Pettersen & Albers, 2001) and usually engaged in less responsive and less positive parenting behavior toward their children (Kim-Cohen, Moffitt, Taylor, Pawlby, & Caspi, 2005). Accordingly, it is understandable that parents with negative emotions, such as anxiety and depression, would be more likely to use psychological aggression to discipline their children.

The presence of significant interaction effects in the current study suggests that maternal anxiety and depression had moderate effects on the transmission of psychological aggression. Specifically, the mothers who had psychological aggression experiences were more likely than the other mothers with similar discipline histories to repeat these patterns with their child if they had high levels of anxiety or depression. Thus, high levels of maternal anxiety and depression appear to strengthen the transmission of psychological aggression. In view of these findings, it is possible that anxiety and depression may increase the likelihood that mothers would engage in rapid and automatic information processing, which, in turn, induces the occurrence of reactive, easily instituted parenting practices (Grusec & Goodnow, 1994; Holden, Stein, Ritchie, Harris, & Jouriles, 1998). For mothers who experienced psychological aggression in childhood, psychological aggression may represent the easily instituted parenting practice learned from interactions in their family of origin. In this regard, during disciplinary attempts, anxiety and depression may quickly and automatically increase the activation of psychological aggression experiences in childhood to guide disciplinary responding. Thus, psychological aggression experiences in childhood may be more likely to lead to mothers’ high-risk disciplinary responding, such as the use of psychological aggression, for mothers with high levels of anxiety and depression than for those with low levels of anxiety and depression.

In addition, it is important to note that none of the significant interaction effects of paternal psychological aggression experiences and the anxiety and depression interactions were found. Thus, although paternal anxiety and depression uniquely predicted current use of psychological aggression, these paternal anxiety and depression did not appear to exacerbate the intergenerational transmission of psychological aggression. This father–mother difference may be explained by a Chinese cultural practice: “nan zhu wai, nv zhu nei,” which suggests that men take care of things outside the family, whereas women take care of things inside the family. Given the father’s and mother’s role in Chinese culture, the source of anxiety and depression may be different for mothers and fathers. Maternal negative emotions may come from domestic factors, such as more stressful life events (MacKenzie, Kotch, & Lee, 2011) and problematic parent–child interactions (MacKenzie & McDonough, 2009). However, paternal negative emotions may be highly associated with external factors, such as unemployment (Hoard & Anderson, 2004). It was possible that the negative emotions related to parenting made it easy to activate related parenting experiences, thus influencing the effect of parenting experiences on current parenting behavior. Hence, it is understandable that while maternal anxiety and depression can strengthen the transmission of psychological aggression, paternal anxiety and depression cannot.

The results of this study are not without several limitations. First, the assessment of parental psychological aggression experiences was retrospective, and parents were the only informants of their anxiety and depression, experiences of psychological aggression, and current use of psychological aggression. Retrospective reports may be subject to inaccurate recall, and single-informant reports might also, to some extent, inflate the relationships among these variables. For example, individuals who report using much psychological aggression toward their children may also tend to report more experiences of psychological aggression in childhood and more anxiety and depression than those who report never using such discipline. Future longitudinal studies with multiple informants will be helpful in refining our understanding of how parental psychological aggression experiences and anxiety and depression might influence their current use of psychological aggression. Second, the present sample primarily consisted of parents of adolescents. It is not certain whether our findings can be generalized to parents of younger or older children. For example, it may be that parents of younger children were more likely to use harsh discipline (Tang, 2006) and may encounter more parenting stress (Skreden et al., 2012), which may increase parental anxiety and depression. Thus, the relations among the three variables that were examined in the current study may be stronger in the parents of younger children. In addition, we must keep in mind that most of our participants were less-educated parents from intact families with a single child. Considering that the level of anxiety and depression and the frequency of psychological aggression may be lower in well-educated parents and higher in single-parent families (Mersky, Berger, Reynolds, & Gromoske, 2009), the relation patterns among these three main variables may vary according to the characteristics of samples. Thus, the question of whether these findings could be generalized to well-educated parents or single-parent families remains to be answered. It would be interesting to extend the present study to a group of Chinese families from different social and cultural backgrounds. Finally, it should also be noted that the both paternal and maternal psychological aggression experiences and anxiety and depression accounted for only a small amount of the variance in the measure of their current use of psychological aggression. This finding suggests that other proximal factors not measured in the current study may contribute to the cycle of parental psychological aggression and thus need to be considered in future research.

Despite these limitations, the current study has important implications for theoretical models and practical work. To our knowledge, it is the first study to directly examine the transmission of parental psychological aggression and the moderating roles of parental anxiety and depression in this transmission process in Chinese societies. It expanded the previous work by simultaneously examining the effects of distal (e.g., psychological aggression experiences) and proximal (e.g., negative emotions) parental risk factors and further extended our understanding of individual differences in current parental behavior. Importantly, considering that the socio-cultural context in Chinese societies is still heavily influenced by the Confucian tradition, this issue is particularly meaningful to be discussed. Confucian socialization goals emphasize children’s responsibility to be obedient to their parents (Ho, 1986), which may promote strict control, intolerance of misbehavior, and harsh discipline in Chinese parents (Ima & Hohm, 1991; Tang, 2006). In addition, as indicated by the Chinese proverb “Beating and scolding is the emblem of love,” traditional Chinese cultures also tend to perceive harsh parenting behaviors as an indication of parental involvement, concern, and love (Chao, 1994; Hou, Yu, Ting, Sze, & Fang, 2011; Simons, Wu, Lin, Gordon, & Conger, 2000). Many studies have found that harsh discipline was still a common and socially accepted parenting practice in modern Chinese societies (Huang, 2016; Huang, Cheah, Lamb, & Zhou, 2017; Ng, Pomerantz, & Deng, 2014), and approximately 80.34% of Chinese mothers and 74.94% of Chinese fathers administered psychological aggression to their children in the past year (Wang & Liu, 2014). Given the influence of Chinese traditional thought and the current high occurrence of parental psychological aggression, the findings of our study provided valuable insights into Chinese parents’ parenting practice and provided some important practical implications for improving the prevention and intervention of psychological aggression. First, the present study found that parental psychological aggression experiences and negative emotions both influenced their current use of psychological aggression. Thus, for intervention programs, targeting parents who reported psychological aggression experiences or who were experiencing high levels of anxiety and depression was helpful in reducing psychological aggression. In particular, it also should be noted that increasing pressure from life and job may bring high levels of anxiety and depression to parents in modern Chinese societies. Hence, providing support or advice to reduce parental negative emotions could be key elements in reducing the high incidence of psychological aggression in China. For example, delivering cognitive behavior therapy or mindfulness-based therapy for parents with depression and anxiety to reduce parental negative emotions may be a promising method. Moreover, supporting parents in the learning and mastery of more appropriate and effective alternative disciplinary methods may be useful in helping parents to reduce the use of psychological aggression (Bower-Russa, 2005; Vlahovicova, Melendez-Torres, Leijten, Knerr, & Gardner, 2017). Second, the present study also found the strengthening effects of maternal anxiety and depression on the transmission of psychological aggression. Considering that mothers are the primary caregivers (Chang, Schwartz, Dodge, & McBride-Chang, 2003) and mothers engage in more psychological aggression toward their children (Wang & Liu, 2014) in most Chinese families, this finding provides important implications to broke the cycle of mothers’ psychological aggression. That is, mothers who had psychological aggression experiences, especially those with high negative emotions such as anxiety and depression, should be important targets in the interventions aimed at diminishing maternal psychological aggression.

Footnotes

Ethical Statement

All procedures performed involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all parents and children included in the study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31571133) awarded to Meifang Wang. We are grateful to all the children, parents, and teachers who participated or contributed to this project.

ORCID iD

Xiaopei Xing

Author Biographies

Meifang Wang is a professor in the College of Elementary Education at Capital Normal University. She received her PhD in education from Beijing Normal University. Her research interests include the personality and social development of children and adolescence, children’s social and cognitive development, children and adolescence’s school adjustment, the development and training of children and adolescence’s social capability, family, and the development of children and adolescence.

Fang Wang is a master degree candidate in the Department of Psychology at Capital Normal University. Her research interests include intergenerational transmission of harsh discipline and children’s adjustment, and personality and social development of children and adolescence.

Yuzhu Wang is a master degree candidate in the Department of Psychology at Capital Normal University. Her research interests include the relations between parental harsh discipline and children’s adjustment, and personality and social development of children and adolescence.

Xiaopei Xing is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at Capital Normal University. She received her PhD in education from Shandong Normal University. Her research interests include the social and cognitive development of children and adolescence, and the relations between family and the development of the children and adolescents.

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